"The instantly recognisable voice, one of the world's greatest - doesn't quite soar as it used to ... The title - History - refers to tributes to past friends (notably late Etoile bassist Habib Faye), revisits to older songs and a rather clever bit of musical Tardisism with a pair of new tracks built around recordings by legendary Nigerian percussionist Babatunde Olatunji (...), most successfully on "Takuta". A few other tracks verge on passing the Stork/butter test, most notably "Macoumba", but the use of a couple of guest vocalists is really ill-advised. "Hello (Remix)" has a Congolese person called Mohombi going flat out to ape international vanilla boy band R&B vocal style ... Even more sacrilegious is a karaoke remix of his classic "Birima" featuring "hyped" (that's the press release's own description) Swedish-Gambian Seinaba Sey, who might as well be an American B-list R&B singer for all the vocal clichés she imparts to it, in English. It's tracks like that, and his own excessive singing in English, which has never worked (...), that make you wonder if this really is the sort of record that he wants to make"

"Senegal's king of song finds it easy looking back, but moving forward is more problematic ... Opener "Habib Faye" (...) is a lovely slice of sophisticated pop, as are the rootsier "Macoumba" and "Ay Coono La". More unusual are "My Child" and "Takuta", both written by and featuring samples of the Nigerian percussionist Babatunde Olatunji, who died in 2003 ... Yet there is still space for two absolute clunkers: another reworking of "Birima" (with Seinabo Sey) and a by-the-numbers duet with Mohombi on his 2019 hit "Hello". Neither of these Swedish pop stars bring anything as memorable to the party as Neneh Cherry did for "7 Seconds", but they do leave the Senegalese, now in his 60th year, looking slightly desperate"